


Healed

by Hope



Category: Lord of the Rings - Fandom
Genre: Gen, first person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-07-24
Updated: 2002-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 13:36:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/540.html</p></blockquote>





	Healed

The wound on my hand was tender at first; i couldn't bare to touch anything with it or have it touched. At first it was a reflexive flinching away, something that developed from habit into instinct - I simply wouldn't _touch_ anything with that hand. As it healed gradual loss of pain re-allowed me the tentative use of my fingers again; but that gap, that hideous _stump_ where my ring finger ought to have been . . . I could hardly bear to look at it, let alone have it touch anything.

Yet I know it's healed - the skin there is no longer vivid-red, no longer _raw_; rather a slightly darker tone, crowned with a ragged white line of scar tissue. I _know_ it's healed, even the bandages have been removed weeks since; yet i'm still reluctant to have anything touch it. Instinct, perhaps, has betrayed me again. I find i'm having to force myself to touch things, to touch things to it. It was tentative, at first; my flesh still held memory of what _ought_ to have been there, and so the lightest touch of fingertips caused a tingling almost-pain. _Almost_-pain . . . The fear of it sinking behind a new wonder, for the delicate new tissue - yet untouched - sensed each individual groove of my fingerprint, each slick ridge on smooth fingernails. Each tiny hair, each pore, each of the fine, fine cracks mapping the skin on the back of my hand . . .

It is with tentative wonder, then, that I touch things now . . . Seeking out the secrets hidden from sight and dulled to the rest of my nerves from . . . over-recognition, perhaps. Too much pressure still hurts, though I don't know whether it's from a residual pain in the wound or the hyper-sensitivity that I hoard within it now.

Makes me wonder if there are other parts of me, undiscovered and untouched, alive with unexperienced sensation. And yet I've been turned inside out before; I don't think there _is_ anything left . . . Except this, now. A mutated fascination born of loss, not of new discovery.

*

I can feel the tiny invisible scratches in Bag End's brass knocker. I can feel scorched brittleness in the locks of Sam's hair. I can feel each individual icy link of chain around my neck. I can feel the smooth coolness of Galadriel's phial, viewing its light through touch as it grows too bright and I have to close my eyes. And I still feel the damp sting of salt as I sit by the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/540.html


End file.
